Alone in the Corner

My thoughts on Avery being fired

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:19:00 -0500

On the Nets Firing Avery Johnson

Anytime I talk about coaching, I’m talking solely about “in-game” management. Practices, game review, and other aspects of player development happen behind the scenes. I have theories about which coaches do these things better than others, but for me to speculate on that would be little more than guesswork.

When I’m watching a game, I don’t have to guess I can see a coach’s substitution patterns, his clock management, and the matchups he’s looking to exploit. When I talk about coaching, I’m talking about what I can see.

This makes the Brooklyn Nets’ decision to fire Avery Johnson a bittersweet one. Of all the current head coaches, I think Avery has been the most lucrative for me, not necessarily because I was betting against his teams. But rather I had a good handle on how he approached the game.

Most people know about my all-in Lakers title bet in 2000, but my biggest “one-time” score was in 2007. That’s the year Avery Johnson coached the No. 1 seed Dallas Mavericks all the way to the playoffs, only to have them lose in six games to the No. 8 seed Golden State Warriors.

Dallas went into the series an 11-1 favorite, with the league’s best record at 67-15.

They had the second-most efficient offense (1.11 ppp) but were 28th out of 30 in pace. They played slow but it worked because they had the league’s best offensive half-court player in Dirk Nowitzki.

Without going into too much detail, one reason I really liked GSW to win that series was because I felt that Avery would try to play slow against them, and I didn’t think this was a good strategy. There were other factors that influenced the bet, but that was the predominant one.

You aren’t going to win a lot of game against a transition team like GSW if you aren’t scoring in transition as well — especially when your half-court offense consists of jumpshots. Dirk was (and is) an amazing offensive player, but he’s a jump-shooting big man.

It’s okay to want to slow the game down and pound the ball inside the immediate basket area. But it’s extremely difficult to have proper floor spacing when your power forward is 15 to 17 feet from the basket, and your point guards and wings are below the free throw line extended. This type of offense leads to easy fast breaks the other way, even off of makes.

During that playoff series, Dallas averaged 13.28 seconds per offensive possession compared to GSW’s 10.92 seconds. That explains the average fast break points per game:

Dallas: 13.83

GSW: 25.50

Good luck winning 4 out of 7 when you’re gifting the other team 11+ fast break points per game.

Avery Johnson loves having his team play at a slow pace because it allows him to control the flow of the game. You might be able to get away with that when you’ve got Dirk on your team, but NBA basketball generally doesn’t lend itself to that kind of coaching.

Consider that the shot clock is only 24 seconds. By the time the ball is inbounded to the point guard, if he has to look to the coach to get the play, and then communicate it to the players, you’re reduced to a 10-13 second clock. If the defense takes away the first option, you are now looking at trying to get something off with 3-5 seconds left on the clock.

Brooklyn may not have the personnel to be a fast-breaking team, but Deron Williams is a decent point guard who knows how to get a team into good sets. It’s extremely inefficient to have Deron looking to Avery on every possession to get the play call.

Plenty has been written about Brooklyn’s inability to score in the 2h. Here are the numbers:

1st half: 1.10 ppp

2nd half: .99 ppp

I put the blame on Avery, who is almost certainly calling more plays in 2h than 1h.

Avery Johnson is the same micromanaging coach in 2012 that he was in 2007, without a Dirk Nowitzki to protect him from his Control Freak ways.

The Fans in Brooklyn may not miss Avery Johnson the head coach, but me and my bottom line sure will.

Hiring a Programmer

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 23:38:00 -0500

We are currently looking to add another programmer(s) to do a project for our team. Experience in python, django and mysql, as well as parsing html and xml is a must.

Knowledge of sports is a plus but not necessary.

*Job Description**:

Offering contract work for an experienced programmer to develop specialized software to automate interactions with various websites. Telecommuting only.

**Requirements**

* Proficiency with Python/Django a must.

* Experience with MySQL, HTML/XML parsing.

* Javascript and its related technologies, (AJAX, jQuery)

* Knowledge of internet security a plus.

* Committed, hard worker and self-motivated.

*E-mail contact; bob@nbaplaycharting.com

*Contract Work

*Telecommuting Only

Heroes and Villains in Poker

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 01:27:00 -0400

People have asked how I was impacted by Black Friday and the FTP fiasco and while I heavily sympathize with the people who have had their money tied up and held hostage since Black Friday, I didn’t have any money on deposit with Full Tilt so it didn’t really impact me in the normal sense. I did however almost buy a piece of FTP around 2004 and am owed money by an owner of FTP so it has impacted me.

Around 2004 I came extremely close to buying a 2 or 3% share of Fulltilt Poker my main concern wasn’t really IF I was going to buy a percentage of FTP, but how rather how much I was going to buy (I was offered up to 3 percent).

I remember talking with Howard Lederer at length and while I was a bit reticent when I learned what others had paid for their shares, (not only wasn’t I getting in on the discounted first tier rate, I was actually paying more than the secondary investors as well). In short I was getting in at the tail end of the FTP investment chain, and while this didn’t really appeal to my sense of relative value, it was either a good investment at this price, or it wasn’t.

And with that I decided to press on. Howard even had talked to me about the possibility of me getting reduction in price if I actually did some work for FTP. At the time I had been consulting for an online gaming company for about 4-5 years, so I had a bit of experience in this field.

I decided that it would be wise to meet with Chris Ferguson and the guy they were hiring as their CEO. So one night in 2004 I visited with Ray Bitar and Chris Ferguson.

We had dinner and I chatted for I think around 3 hours and to say that I came away less than impressed with Ray would be under selling it. I remember having difficulty expressing this to Howard delicately. Howard remarked that while Ray might not have been as sharp as him or Chris, nobody was going to outwork Ray.

To me Ray’s lack of sharpness wasn’t really the issue. The issue was that I kind of felt he might have been actually been dumb. I even mentioned this to Howard but I am not sure if I used the term “dumb” or some other derogatory dismissive term.

In the end I decided that I wasn’t really interested in doing any other non sports betting work at that time, and I was not going to pay a markup to invest in what was at best a grey area gaming company headed by a (hardworking) Buffoon.

Ultimately I declined.

As the years passed, and the FTP shareholder distributions started rolling in, I was largely ridiculed by a lot of the owners of FTP, and rightly so by all accounts.

How bad was the decision financially?

Each percentage of FTP that I would have bought would have netted me around $4 million in distribution payments. So by not investing I probably cost myself somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million bucks (depending on if I bought 2 or 3%).

When Black Friday hit I felt somewhat vindicated, but clearly I still regretted passing on an investment that would have netted me +10m in profits.

So while I didn’t have any money tied up in FTP, nor was I an investor / owner, I was still somewhat invested as one of the owners owed me (and still owes me) a rather large sum of money.

Black Friday, FTP and why everyone needs a friend like Daniel.

Black Friday turned the poker world on its ear. People who were heroes (as much as a poker player could be I suppose) have since been cast as villains, and it has actually become quite difficult to discern (aside from a few obvious choices) who the heroes and the villains in post Black Friday poker world are.

Unless of course you are Daniel Negreanu, he seems to have an easier time than most. Daniel is unapologetically loyal, and luckily for him (at least in his eyes) most of his friends have done no wrong, and most of his enemies can’t seem to ever do right.

I say most because Erick Lindgren is one of Daniels closest friends. Daniel hasn’t given Erick the rough treatment he normally gives people the people he has earmarked as villains. But he has talked about how what Erick did was wrong and that he is a just an old fashioned run of the mill degenerate.

As an aside the word Degen has been used a lot in the poker and gambling world and I think we are doing ourselves a disservice by deifying people with a “lot of gamble” as being “degen”. There is nothing cool or admirable about gambling way above your head if it means you have to borrow and stiff in order to do so.

Erick the Degen has owed me and countless others money for a number of years and never quite got around to settling these debts while the FTP money train was chugging along. I’d estimate that Erick received at least $12 million from the sale of some of his full tilt shares as well as the monthly dividend distributions.

Note that I arrived at $12 million as Edog’s distribution figure because at one point he owned 3% of the company. FTP insiders have reported that the company paid out approximately >400 million in distributions, and he also so either sold a share or took a 1 year pawn shop style loan against a percentage of his ownership at some point in March of 2008.

I found out about this loan / sale from a friend and when I confronted Erick about it (he never offered to pay me any money) he at first denied that he was doing that then acted all indignant when I confronted him. I actually went to Howard and explained to him the situation and at that point Erick begrudgingly paid off roughly 20% of what he owed me. This 20% payment represented less than 10% of what he actually received from selling his share.

He also promised to make regular monthly payments as soon as his monthly distributions came in to clear up the rest of our figure in approximated 1.5 years time. These payments I think lasted 1 or 2 months before Erick started avoiding me and being unresponsive.

Some have asked how Erick came to actually owe me money, some even implying that I beat him out of it betting sports (I didn’t). And while in my opinion the reason why he owes me money is immaterial. It would best be classified as a loan of sorts.

At the time of Black Friday, Erick had paid off roughly 65% of his loan (not including interest).

it took him 6 begrudging years to do so, which at the time was 5 years longer than he claimed it would take him to initially pay off the figure.

After Black Friday, the FTP money train stopped chugging along, and with that Erick went from;

A guy who was comparing his wealth to that of Hollywood Actors slash Comedians

To a guy who was called out for being a deadbeat on 2+2

The truth is Erick was always a deadbeat, he was just a deadbeat who happened to have a money tree in his backyard in the form of his 2-3% ownership of FTP. He was actually worse than a deadbeat because rather than pay off his debts with his distribution payments, he’d end up up gambling even more with new people and lose more money.

At one point I told Erick that all he had to was just chill for a year and he’d have everyone paid off with all his FTP money. For whatever reason that didn’t really appeal to him.

Daniel to his credit did call Erick out on twitter. But Erick didn’t receive the usual rabid KidPoker treatment.

How you could not call a guy out who was outright stiffing and slow paying people during the same time period he received $12m in distributions is beyond me?

If you are receiving ~$250k a month and choosing to gamble that money rather than pay off your debts, in my books that you are a stiff and deserve to be called out for it.

Note that the $12m figure didn’t include an additional $4 million that Erick received immediately before Black Friday. Half of which was a loan, and half of which I believe was theft.

Whats that theft?

Yes there was the small matter of him asking for a $2 million loan from Chris Ferguson in April of 2011 and actually receiving $4 million by mistake.

Say What?

Jump to around the 10 min mark of this video.

I commented on twitter that if it was Daniels arch enemy Annie Duke who had borrowed the $2m, and for all intents and purposes “stole” an additional $2m when refusing to return it, Daniel probably would have been foaming at the mouth to talk about what a thief Annie was. (Yes receiving money in a clerical error and not returning it is usually classified as theft).

And while I don’t think Daniel is required to attack his friends with the same venom he attacks his enemies. I do think he needs to be a little more balanced about things.

Recall that at one point he video blogged about how he would have loved it if Howard Lederer got assaulted (I think with a baseball bat I can’t quite remember and can’t be bothered to watch it again), and yet when it when it came to discussing Erick he kind of shuffled it off.

Daniel even went so far as to split hairs (incorrectly I might add) and claim that although receiving AND KEEPING a $2m clerical error was wrong, it wasn’t actually fraud or theft.

Newsflash. Some would Disagree.

Finally I’d like to add that I didn’t really intend this to be an attack on Daniel I just expected him to be a bit more balanced in his critique of Edog. And while Daniel definitely gets a bit too riled up for my taste in his crusade of good vs evil in the poker world. He seems like the kind of person who would rather starve than stiff someone.

In addition Daniel is very loyal to his friends, and I admire that quality. In fact I think that everyone deserves a doggedly loyal friend like Daniel.

Mine is named Coltrane.

And Coltrane is nothing if not a superhero.

NBA catch up post

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:51:00 -0400

For a guy who actually thought about being a writer in university, I must say that I find it painfully difficult to actual write anything longer than 140 characters. You can blame it on texting or twitter, but I think spending the better part of my adulthood watching 5-6 different basketball games simultaneously on 6 tv’s probably deserves some blame.

That being said, Its been quite some time since my last entry so consider this an NBA recap of sorts.

They were who we thought they were

I predicted the Miami Heat to run roughshod over the rest of the NBA when they assembled their “big three” of LBJ, Dwade and Bosh in 2010. I was wrong. Sort of.

back then I wrote;

OKC provides a glimmer of hope - if they can add one more great player then they have a shot in a few years time. They have Westbrook who has the ability to be a decent defender, as does Harden. And they have a relative defensive ace in Thabo Sefalosha, but nobody with enough size to handle LeBron. The players in the league who are best suited to handle LeBron, Artest, Pierce, and Battier are all on the wrong side of 30.

Get back to me when Lebron is 31 because for the next 5 years it’s over.

Of course Mark Cuban and the Mavs had the last laugh in 2010 and now the Lakers have stacked the deck for a few more runs at it, but I still think the Heat are pretty much set for the next 4-5 years.

Why?

I think basically Spoelstra and the Heat staff deserve a lot of credit for figuring out the right style of play and filling out the roster. Initially i wanted to see a lot of LeBron playing PG, but he’s much much more well suited to playing the 4 and thats precisely what the Heat did last year during their playoff run.

Fortunately for Miami there aren’t too many bigs in the league that can really punish Miami for playing small and as long as Miami is willing to surround LBJ with a bunch of 3 point shooters they’ll be absolutely devastating.

Now that the Lakers have picked up Dwight things have changed somewhat. People forget just how good Dwight Howard is on both sides of the ball. Do you really think that any one other player (save for LeBron) could have taken Orlando to the finals in 2009? Dwight is scary good and now he is playing on a stacked Lakers starting five.

The Lakers Heat matchup presents as good an example of conflicting basketball styles (small vs big) as I can recall. It’ll be interesting to see if either team blinks first or if both teams stay true to their philosophies. In last years finals OKC and coach Scott Brooks didn’t alter their lineups or make many adjustments. They stayed big and their bigs had a lot of trouble defending out to the 3 point line, and I personally think that cost them a chance of winning the series.

The difference between the Lakers and OKC is that the Lakers bigs will actually produce on the offensive end whereas neither Ibaka or Perkins have to be guarded in the traditional sense. So if Mike Brown decides to stay big (and I think he should) against the Heat, you won’t hear a peep out of me. both Dwight and Pau are very good offensively.

Yes, Dwight is a good offensive player. A lot of people confuse being good offensively as someone who has a polished look to his offensive game, being good offensively in the NBA means that when you are on the floor, your teams offense performs better than it does when you are off the floor. Dwight does a lot of things on offense that makes his team more efficient and because of that, he is a fantastic offensive player.

The Lockout Effect

I get asked quite often how betting the NBA lockout shortened season went last year and in a word it was exhausting.

First off our model had no idea it was a lockout, it had no idea that teams didn’t have a proper training camp nor exhibition schedule, last year was the only year we ever had to add ad hoc “hack” at the end of our models output. That created a lot of uncertainty and I was legitimately worried that the year would be extremely difficult to cap.

We did however come up with a few different hacks, I say different hacks because the hack wasn’t static, it had to be malleable and fluid as the season progressed. I don’t really like to talk too much specifically about my methods so I apologize if this is unnecessarily vague. But ya last year was exhausting.

In addition to the fluid malleable hack, the season itself was a nightmare in terms of scheduling. Normally I work around 70 hours a week during the season, but if feels like a smooth 70 hours. I basically spend nearly every waking hour save 2-3 a day working on basketball during the season, the lone saving grace for me was the light Turner TNT Thursday nights (previously coined “date night” by my ex). Thursdays were nice, I could relax and take it easy. Last year, there were no light Thursdays. It was pretty much a mess of basketball every day all season long.

I remember following twitter the night the lockout ended and being so excited that I couldn’t stop smiling. I also remember the last week of the regular season rolling around and being nearly as excited.

Despite the exhaustion, it was a pretty good year from a betting standpoint, but still I never really felt like I had a chance to catch my breath till the end of March. I am usually a bit sad when the regular season is winding down, not last year. I was earning, but I couldn’t wait for it to be over. This year I can’t wait get back to the grind of a regular regular season. All thats left is to deal with all that messy lockout data from last year.

Best and Worst on Offense

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 03:25:00 -0400

The stat I like to use most to determine how effective a players offensive production has been (individually) is points per possession or ppp.

ppp basically tells us how many points per possession your team scored when you were the offensive player who ended the possession. Baskets are positive, misses, and turnovers are negative.

The one thing you’ll notice with ppp numbers is that by and large they are dominated by guys that shoot (and make) a lot of 3 pointers. In general catch and shoot 3 point shooters are usually near the top of the list. PPP is highly contextual, its really useful to compare players who perform similar tasks, but not that useful in comparing players with disparate skill types.

To wit Derrick Rose has a ppp of .78 on 93 possessions, whereas Kyle Korver, a player who benefits from the type of wide open 3 point looks a guy like Derek Rose creates has a ppp of 1.20.

So with that in mind;

Here are the top 5 players in ppp (minimum 20 possessions used).

1. Ray Allen 48 possessions 1.54 ppp

2. Brandon Roy 31 possessions 1.29 ppp

3. Peja Stojakovic 28 possessions 1.29 points per

4. Ron Artest 33 possessions 1.21 points per

5. Wes Matthews 41 possessions 1.20 points per

Bottom 5

1. Glen Davis 22 possessions .45 points per

2. Tyler Hansbrough 38 possessions .53 points per

3. Tyson Chandler 22 possessions .55 points per

4. Andre Iguodala 27 possessions .56 points per

5. Jose Juan Barea 28 possessions .57 points per

Other notables;

Tony Parker 66 possessions .73 points per

Pau Gasol 44 possessions .75 points per

Rajon Rondo 66 possessions .83 points per

Carmelo Anthony 84 possessions .86 points per

Dirk Nowitzki 80 possessions .98 points per

Dwyane Wade 43 possessions 1.07 points per

LeBron James 45 possessions 1.18 points per

Chris Paul 68 possessions 1.09 points per

Kobe Bryant 77 possessions .97 points per

Kevin Durant 84 possessions 1.07 points per

Andrew Bynum 45 possessions .98 points per

High Stakes Poker

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 17:56:00 -0400

I got an email a little while back from Mori of PokerProductions asking if I’d like to take part in the upcoming season of High Stakes Poker. For those unfamiliar with High Stakes Poker here is the wiki link. I used to play quite a bit of poker from 2005-2007 some would even say I actually played it quite well.

In the last few years I have been preoccupied with other things, so I haven’t much interest in playing poker. Truthfully the high stakes live poker scene kind of peaked in 2007, in 2007 you’d have all kinds of drop ins playing high stakes, guys like Pete the Plumber would show up one weekend gamble pretty high - win some / lose some. Then vanish.

In the summer of 2007 there was a regular 100-200 NL game, along with a few 200-400 blind NL games, these games were regularly filled with people who were willing to (and quite often destined to) lose large sums of money as if it was their job.

By the summer of 2008 the poker scene had cooled off considerably. There was still the odd music producer, former street performer turned cosmonaut as well a few other characters who showed up, played and shoved their money into the center of the table. But for the most part those games ran infrequently, and when they did it was very difficult to get a seat.

So when I heard that High Stakes Poker was filming its 8th season, and by the way Full Tilt Pros like Durrr, Phil Ivey, and Patrik Antonius (arguably the 3 best and toughest poker players to play against in the world) were not allowed to play. Despite me being extremely rusty at poker, and not really having played stakes like that in some time, I snap accepted.

I flew into Vegas from Burbank the morning the day of the shoot. Usually the way things work is you play poker for around 5 hours, take a dinner break, and then finish up at around 10pm that night. They then take that days worth of taping and turn into X shows depending on how interesting / compelling the play was for that day.

I don’t think that our day of taping was too interesting, for the most part nobody really went off, but the opportunity to make money seemed pretty good.

My table looked like this;

Phil Laak

Mike Baxter (businessman who I have played quite a bit with)

Jonathan Duhamel (WSOP ME winner)

Jason Mercier

Rando businessman

Barry Greenstein.

My initial thoughts were that I wanted to play as many pots as possible with the Rando businessmen, and try to play as simple a game as possible.

The blinds were 400-800 with a 100 ante, meaning it would cost you $2000 to play one round. Most of the people at the table bought in for the minimum $200,000 and I did the same, I was prepared to buy in for another $400,000 if the situation warranted and I went busto.

The last time I had played any remotely moderately staked poker was in 2008, the game then was 500-1000 blind NL (then switched to PLO) and it was easily the wildest / biggest game I had ever played in. I lost a 550,000 pot in the first hour, decided to take a walk around the casino and decide whether I wanted to continue.

I decided the game was too good to pass up, and continued playing for around 15 more hours. Won the biggest pot of my life, questioned my sanity for playing in a game where most hands were straddled and restraddled sometimes re-re straddled.

For those who are unaware of what this means it means that people would involuntary post 3rd and 4th (sometimes 5th) blinds of $2000, $4000 and $8000 by the time it got to you, it would be 4-8000 to call, sometimes $25,000 to call. Every orbit someone would stick 300-400k in the middle of the table, get called and then say - I don’t have much what do you have? Want to run it twice?

So ya - that was the last time I played live poker and here I was on set getting ready to play a fairly big buyin NL cash game.

The people at High Stakes Poker don’t want you posting any results prior to airing but I’ll will say that I make arguably the worst fold in the history of televised poker (it seemed right when I folded), marginal 1-2 mins later and epically bad 30 mins later.

I had never played a cash game with Barry G before and to be honest hadn’t seen much of his cash game play (I rarely watch the tv shows that I am not on because I am vain like that). So when I made the fold it felt okay, after seeing Barry play for the rest of the day, I was sure I made a bad fold. I am not sure if this hand appears in episode 1 or 2 but it will surely make the show.

For those interested the show airs on GSN at 5pm PST tonight.

Defensive Philosophies

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:21:00 -0500

After an extremely long blogging hiatus, I have decided to see if I can’t return to blogging some.

I found it interesting that the Lakers one of the few Western Conference team (i think) to not send a representative to SSAC .

And then I read an article that Kevin Ding has written detailing how the Lakers have tweaked their defense to adjust to the modern game.

“The concession is the Lakers will let opponents take mid-range jumpers from 15 to 19 feet. The Lakers can stay out on 3-point shooters better and keep point guards from getting all the way to the basket. When Tony Parker got hot early for San Antonio on Sunday, the Lakers moved up their plug just enough to deter him”

The lakers have basically decided to guard the 3point line, and the paint and leave the midrange game somewhat open, the fascinating thing about this isn’t that the Lakers have finally caught up to the advanced defensive strategy that teams like the Spurs, and Magic under Van Gundy have been employing for some time, its that they have been winning championships in spite of this.

The “genius” in this is that you are basically allowing the worst ev shot in basketball the midrange jumper, and taking away all the higher ev shots. Trivial yes, but the fact that the Lakers have finally discovered this is troubling to the rest of the league.

I remember listening to a Phil Jackson presser from the 2008 season where he described his disdain for the corner 3 point shot - he argued that once the defensive rebound was secured. it led to a higher than normal amount of transition opportunities.

I have always been a big proponent of the corner three point shot - after watching the Lakers repeatedly leave Ray Allen, Eddie House, and James Posey wide open from the corner (the Posey 3 point shots were especially comical as you’d have Lamar Odom streaking down the center of the court awaiting a fast break outlet pass that never materialized), it was clear to me that the Lakers were actually coaching their team to abandon the corner 3 point area in hopes of exploiting transition opportunities.

I decided to watch and chart every 3 point shot and the ensuing rebound from the 2007 and 2008 season and found that the corner 3 point shot did not lead to higher than normal fast break opportunities.

The Lakers are going to be a much tougher out in the playoffs if they are able to consistently protect the paint and close out on 3 point shooters.

Which brings me to this shot chart;

This is a shot chart from the 1st quarter of the Miami Heat @ San Antonio Spurs game from last week. Note how the Heat (offense on the left) were relegated to a mid range jump shooting team, they have no chance of beating the better (defensive) teams in the regular season or the playoffs unless they figure out a way to get something other than a series of 16-20 foot jumpers in the half court.

Photo

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:13:00 -0500

Research Assistant Position

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:05:30 -0500

I am currently looking to bring on at least one research assistant here are the details of the job;

1. The pay is crap / non-existent to start, but if you prove to me your worth we will work something out.

2. You can work from home

3. You will be collecting tidbits of newspaper articles and information and emailing them to me, a good example would be finding links to video of coaches post game conferences and emailing me. You’d also be expected to send me links to newspaper articles that I might find relevant. You’ll put a snippet of text in the email and then provide me with the link to the whole article.

Here is an example;

Shaq and Jermaine Both “Unlikely” To Play vs. Heat?

Chris Forsberg of ESPNBoston has the full coverage in his Practice Report but for now, here’s what we know as the team headed in practice today:

Jermaine O’Neal did not practice due to his sore left knee
Shaquille O’Neal was going to try to practice today
Both players are “unlikely” to play Saturday

http://celticshub.com/2010/11/10/shaq-and-jermaine-both-unlikely-to-play-vs-heat/

If anyone is interested please contact me bob (@) nbaplaycharting.com

NBA wants players on their best behavior

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:28:00 -0400

The NBA has announced that they would like to renew a sense of “Respect for the Game and will likely increase the number or technical fouls called as a result of complaining. The goal of which is to reduce the amount of complaining and (I am assuming) gesticulating from players and coaches alike.

You can read all about it here;

and

Cut the Complaining

etc etc.

The interesting thing in all of this we have already been over this consider;

““The goal here is to significantly reduce the amount of player complaining that takes place in our games. The reason we’re doing is because excessive complaining by the players interferes with game play, it’s distracting to the fans, and it conveys a negative impression of our players as well. So, the goal here is, as I mentioned, to reduce that and help our overall game.”

If you think that is from a recent article, guess again. Its from a Q&A from November of 2006 with Stu Jackson.

In the 2005-2006 (2006)regular season 873 techs were called. *note these are techs that are not the result of illegal defense infractions etc, just plain old techs.

After the league made its internal change prior to the start of the 2007 season we saw an increase in the amount of techs called.

There were 992 techs called in the 2007 season, but only 810 techs called in the 2008 season.

If you are wondering why the NBA did away with its vigor in reducing complaining from the players in between the 2007 and 2008 season you might want to read some of the older posts on this blog (Tim Donaghy).

This would like never have been allowed in 2007 (nor in 2011 it seems)

I guess this new announcement to reduce complaining to the officials is as good a sign as any that the Tim Donaghy scandal has now been put to rest by the NBA.

Somewhere Rasheed Wallace is glad he decided to retire;

I hope its not over, but it likely is...

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:59:17 -0400

Miami has apparently filled out one if its vacant spots with the signing of Mike Miller and as much as I hate to say it, its over for the rest of the league. I had the Heat winning ~64 games with the “trinity” and 9 scrubs. The addition of Mike Miller is a perfect complement to that roster.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that Miami does not need a starting PG, in fact there is this assumption in the NBA that every team requires a PG but why is that the case? You have two extremely high usage players in LeBron and D. Wade, why on earth would you want to play a small PG who will become a defensive liability.

Unless you have a top 5 PG, players like Kobe, LeBron, and D.Wade can and should be the defacto point guards for their team.

I have held this belief for a number of years and cringed in 2009 when the Lakers rolled out a lineup of;

D Fisher

Kobe

Ariza

Gasol

Bynum

Instead of;

Kobe

Ariza

Odom

Bynum

Gasol.

This past year M. Williams and D. West were injured for CLE forcing LeBron to play extended mins at the point, this was an extremely efficient lineup. When the cavs played Boston in the playoffs, why exactly was Mo Williams on the floor, he couldn’t guard Rondo to begin with. Williams’ role was basically reduced to that of being a spot of shooter with LeBron handling the ball.

How is having Mo Williams on the floor any better than having someone like Mike Miller on the floor?

It isn’t.

Teams with players like LeBron and D. Wade (or Kobe for that matter) don’t need PG’s unless they are defensive wizards who are required to guard the ultra quick guards like Aaron Brooks or Chris Paul.

Miami is only lacking a body at the center position, any serviceable big will do, heck they could sign one of the Collins twins and Kurt Thomas and that would be that. Who is going to beat this team?

People have mentioned that the Lakers are the team to beat, I have never been a Kobe fan before, but I just became one - I think they present the toughest challenge to Miami but if MIA gets home court throughout the playoffs and breezes through the regular season as they should. That is going to be a tall order for them.
The one advantage the Lakers have is that they will likely cake walk into the finals whereas Miami will likely have to face one of Orlando or Boston (and maybe both).

Boston is a team that has all the parts to beat Miami, unfortunately the parts areold and decaying rapidly. In order to compete with Miami you are going to need two very good defensive players, one for LBJ and one for Wade.

They don’t come any better than Allen and Pierce, but can we really expect these guys to make one more run. And if Allen got tired guarding Kobe, can you imagine how fatigued he’d get trying to stay in front of D. Wade?

If Boston wants to have a shot they should strongly consider re-signing Tony Allen, and while they are at it they might want to stick him in a gym and teach him how to shoot the ball.

Orlando has been mentioned as a team that will give Miami fits because of D. Howard, but as much as I like Orlando and Stan Van Gundy they don’t have anyone on their roster who can handle either LeBron or Wade let alone both of them.

Howard would be tough for Miami to handle but it won’t matter because I really believe this current Miami team will be one of if not the best offensive teams in league history. The current Orlando squad would match up horribly against this Miami team.

Get back to me when Lebron is 31 because for the next 5 years it’s over.

The new Big Three wins 64 games

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:15:00 -0400

I have read varying reports in terms of how many games the Miami heat expect to win next year with Bosh, James and Wade and have decided to post the results of our season simulator.

Because the rest of the roster is unknown we filled out the roster with what we term scrubbish players. WIthout going into detail on how we arrive at a number for these players lets just call them below avg or somewhat below avg players.

Once Miami fills out the rest of their roster with actual players we’ll get a much clearer picture, but for now here is our prediction of how the big and 9 scrubbies will fair next year.

* note this assumes they all play 82 games which of course isn’t likely.

wins      PS     PA   diff
 --------------------------
 64.4   110.2   97.3   12.9

 team     eff   efg%   tov%   orb%   ftr%
 ----------------------------------------
  MIA    1.18  51.66  14.53  35.04  28.26
  OPP    1.04  45.00  17.01  34.21  26.75

 player   g  gs   min
 -----------------------
 BoshChr01  82  82  33.0
 JamesLe01  82  82  33.0
 scrubish1  82  82  48.1
 scrubish1  82  82  48.1
 scrubish1  82   0   3.7
 scrubish1  82   0  13.8
 scrubish1  82   0  15.1
 scrubish1  82   0  11.4
 scrubish1  82   0   0.0
 WadeDwy01  82  82  34.3

Kobe Bryants Playoff offensive points per possession (ppp) by...

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:28:00 -0400

Kobe Bryants Playoff offensive points per possession (ppp) by opponent / season dating back to 2003.

LeBron James Playoff ppp by season / opponent. Amazing how well...

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:26:00 -0400

LeBron James Playoff ppp by season / opponent. Amazing how well the Spurs did against him in the 4 game sweep of 2007.

Celtics Defense vs Kobe

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:15:00 -0400

Much was made of Kobe Bryants breakout performance in the 3q of yesterdays game. Doc Rivers called him the games best shot maker and I would have to agree with that assessment. It is also quite clear however that in the last 3 playoff seasons no team has defended Kobe Bryant better than the Celtics.

An offensive metric that I really like to use is points per possession - this is much better than any offensive efficiency metric because it takes into account all of the possession altering offensive actions a player might make;

(Shots, turnovers and fouls drawn)

In the Lakers last 3 deep playoff runs 2008,2009 and this year through 5 games, Kobe Bryant has averaged

1.00 ppp on 1936 actions.

Which means that for every time Kobe Bryant has the ball and makes an offensive action (shot, turnover or shooting foul) he has netted roughly 1.00 points.

If you take the Celtics out of the equation he has the following numbers;

(every team he has faced in the playoffs in the past 3 years excluding the Celtics).

1.03 ppp on 1597 actions.

His numbers vs the Celtics in the 2008 and 2010 finals are as follows;

.89 ppp on 339 actions.

Which is a stark contrast from the 1.03 he has averaged vs every other team.

Also interesting to note is that the Celtics have done an even better job on LeBron James.

LeBron James vs all teams other than Boston in the last 3 playoffs;

1.11 ppp on 752 actions

vs the Celtics;

.86 on 405 actions.

Finals Defensive Numbers Updated;

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:31:00 -0400

After game 5 there has been quite the change in some of the numbers I posted the other day. Here then are the updated numbers through 5 games.

With Bynum in;

Boston is scoring;

Total Unique Possessions: 227 Total PPP: 1.066

Bynum out;

Total Unique Possessions: 219 Total PPP: 1.013

Looking at the Celtics offensive numbers in the paint we see the following;

With Bynum in;

Total Unique Possessions: 78 Total PPP: 1.17

Total Plays W/ OffPe: 86 PPPlay: 1.06

With Bynum out;

Total Unique Possessions: 66 Total PPP: 1.21

Total Plays W/ OffPe: 75 PPPlay: 1.066

Bynum Secondary Help;

Total Unique Possessions: 31 Total PPP: 0.71

Garnett Secondary Help;

Total Unique Possessions: 31 Total PPP: 0.81

Celtics Defenders guarding Kobe Bryant;

Ray Allen

Total Unique Possessions: 79 Total PPP: 0.80

Tony Allen

Total Unique Possessions: 28 Total PPP: 0.54

Paul Pierce

Total Unique Possessions: 20 Total PPP: 0.8

Attacking Artest

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 20:36:24 -0400

The Celts like to use Pierce in ISO sets, but this is not the matchup to be doing this - they should focus more on bringing him off of screens and cuts to the basket. They can also use him as the ball handler in Pick and Roll sets. Artest struggles mightily moving laterally but is a great postup and ISO defender -

Here are some examples that illustrate how poorly he moves off of cuts and screens;

NBA Finals advanced defensive numbers

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 08:13:00 -0400

Much has been made of the status of Andrew Bynum, lets start of by taking a look at some per possession number involving Bynum.

Starting with the most basic,

With Bynum In;

Total Plays: 260

Total Unique Possessions: 170 Total PPP: 1.011

This means the Celtics are scoring at a rate of 1.01 per possession with Bynum on the court.

Bynum out;

Total Plays: 310

Total Unique Possessions: 187 Total PPP: 1.069

To put things in perspective through the first four games the average number of possessions per game has been 93.5 possessions. If Bynum was a machine and could play the entire game Boston would rate to score around 5.4 fewer points.

Bynum does a few things well defensively, for one he rebounds the ball extremely well, and he makes scoring in the paint very difficult.

Looking at the Celtics offensive numbers in the paint we see the following;

With Bynum in;

Total Unique Possessions: 61 Total PPP: 1.05

Total Plays W/ OffPe: 69 PPPlay: 0.92

With Bynum out;

Total Unique Possessions: 60 Total PPP: 1.23

Total Plays W/ OffPe: 68 PPPlay: 1.08

* note that the difference between per play and per possession denotes whether or not the ball has changed possession. Its possible to have several plays in the same possession (offensive rebounding would be one example). In addition the per possession numbers account for the ensuing free throws that were the result of an in the paint shooting foul.

To drive the point home, when Andrew Bynum has been the secondary help defender on a play, the Celts offensive numbers look like this;

Total Plays W/ OffPe: 25 PPPlay: 0.56

To put that in Perspective, KG’s secondary help defensive numbers look like this;

Total Plays W/ OffPe: 26 PPPlay: 0.76

It’ll be interesting to see how the Lakers can adjust if it turns out Bynum is limited from here on out in the series.

I also thought it’d be interesting to see how various Celtic Defenders have defended Kobe. Here then are Kobe’s offensive per possession numbers vs the Celtics main defenders.

Ray Allen

Total Unique Possessions: 64 Total PPP: 0.76

Tony Allen

Total Unique Possessions: 24 Total PPP: 0.54

Paul Pierce

Total Unique Possessions: 10 Total PPP: 0.4

To put things in perspective her are Kobe’s numbers from the Phoenix series;

Total Unique Possessions: 276 Total PPP: 1.13

I actually advocate the Celtics playing Pierce on Kobe as much as possible, I realize that Artest poses a tough defensive matchup for Allen but the idea of Ron Artest having a more pronounced role on offense doesn’t scare me too much if I am the Celtics. I also feel like based on their offensive styles, Allen has to exert so much energy on offense running through screens to get open, it would be nice for him to get a bit of a respite and not have to guard Kobe as much on offense.

I also realize that the above samples especially for Pierce are quite small, but would like to add that Pierce did a fantastic job on Kobe in 2008 when he was given the opportunity as well. Here then are the 2008 NBA finals ppp numbers for the Celtics vs Kobe;

Ray Allen

Total Unique Possessions: 64 Total PPP: .78

James Posey

Total Unique Possessions: 37 Total PPP: .65

Paul Pierce

Total Unique Possessions: 31 Total PPP: .64

Tony Allen

Total Unique Possessions: 4 Total PPP: 0

I’ll be posting some more numbers prior to Game 5.

If his lips are moving...

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 09:34:00 -0400

So this blog is quickly becoming all Tim Donaghy all the time and I assure you this was never my intention. Unfortunately the Tim Donaghy publicity tour continues, and I really want to set the record straight on some of his claims.

Consider the following excerpt from Donaghy’s work of fiction “Personal Foul”.;

Minnesota at Charlotte

This was a New Year’s Day game and I was in Charlotte for a matchup between the Bobcats and the TImberwolves.

Before the game, I spoke with my group supervisor Jim Wishner. Jim mentioned that Minnesota’s star forward Kevin Garnett had been getting away with a lot of traveling violations and that no one was paying attention to his footwork. Jim expected us to keep an eye on Garnett and to start enforcing the rule.

he goes on to write;

In addition to the anticipated crackdown on Garnett, I liked the way Charlotte coach Bernie Bickerstaff had his squad playing high-energy basketball most nights. I called Tommy and told him to bet Charlotte.

The Bobcats played well early but fell part during the second half, getting outscored 34-18 in the fourth quarter. Garnett played exceptionally well for Minnesota, while Charlotte’s players were arguing amongst themselves all night. Much of the angst was directed at the Bobcat’s Adam Morrison, who took several off-balanced, ill-advised shots down the stretch in what had been a fairly tight contest.

Minnesota kept its composure and pulled out the road win 102-96. It was a loss for me, Tommy, and Ba Ba, and once again there were no apples coming my way.

What if I told you that they didn’t bet Charlotte as Donaghy claims?

I have mentioned before that shortly after news of the Donaghy scandal broke, I was able to procure a list of games that Donaghy’s money movers Jimmy Battista and Tommy Martino had purportedly bet.

In addition to my list there is a book coming out that will tell the story of Jim Battista, and among other things list the games that Battista and his crew bet for Tim Donaghy. I fully expect that the book will detail that Minnesota was the side they bet in this particular game.

Now I don’t expect you to take me at my word. So lets consider some of the evidence.

In my database I have the betting line opening at Minnesota -2.5 and closing at Minnesota -4 - Absent of any injury or late breaking information this usually means that an imbalance in Minnesota wagers forced the linesmakers to move the line to -3.5 or higher.

Or to put it more bluntly, someone bet the shit out of Minnesota - Now the opening and closing lines don’t always tell the story its much better to look at the actual line history of a few books that take big limits.

Pinnacle Sportbook Line History

Cris Sportsbook LIne History

People who are involved in the sportsbetting industry will be able to appreciate just how extreme Pinnacles movement of the juice is - Cris actually moved the game to -4.5 at one point. These are not normal line movements.

Donaghy writes in his book that Battista was really stepping out betting 50k or more on some of Donaghy’s games. How likely is it that someone could bet 50k or more on a game and see the line move 2.5 points AGAINST THEM?

Extremely unlikely if not impossible.

I’d like to add that the actual amount that was wagered was probably closer to 4 or 5x the amount Donaghy mentions. Especially when you think about all the followers and others that may or may not have been aware of these games). The guys betting these games were not treading lightly, and the lines were moving quite a bit. It is very likely that the very books that were taking bets on these games, were going out and betting these games for themselves. This says nothing of the periphery of movers and agents that Battista might have enlisted to help them get down.

Aside from a large volume of one sided action the only other thing that could have caused such abrupt line movement was an injury or some kind of alert of that sort. There was no such information or key injury in this game.

How can we then reconcile Donaghy claiming that this game brought “no apples” as the crew bet on Charlotte and lost?

I alluded to Donaghy’s book as a work of fiction, and I truly feel that much of what he writes is a very special kind of fiction. I believe that Donaghy writes things to purposely deflect and divert people from the truth. So when Donaghy offhandedly mentions a flaw in their system;

Sometimes Tommy was so stoned when I phoned in my picks that he passed on the wrong information to Ba Ba (Battista). At times, I thought that Tommy might be pulling a double cross and filling his own wallet. But no, that wasn’t his style;

It strikes me as odd. I don’t know anything about Tommy, if he was a stoner or wasn’t a stoner - lets call him a stoner. Based on the way these guys conducted themselves in this operation, and the fact that Battista actually did a stint in rehab during the 2007 season it’s very likely that Donaghy is telling the truth.

So while its possible that Donaghy told Martino and Battista to bet Charlotte and they mistakenly bet Minnesota. The fact that Donaghy mentions that this game was a loss and it was their 3rd straight loss in a row leads me to believe that this wouldn’t be the case as I am sure he’d have gotten his “apples” after they won and mistakenly tried to pay him. But lets discount that for a second and take a look at how Donaghy called this game;

Tim Donaghy foul+violation details;

Calls favoring CHA 0

Calls favoring MIN 17

No that is not a typo, Tim Donaghy made 17 fouls+violation calls in this game and all 17 times the call favored Minnesota. Why did Donaghy call this game so egregiously? If you look at the score of the game - When Donaghy makes his 4th call MIN is already trailing by 7 points. By his 7th call they are trailing by 20 - Desperate times call for desperate measures especially as Apples are at stake.

Note that the largest call margin game Donaghy game had a similar pattern. That particular game featured 32 Donaghy calls, 26 favored the team he bet who was also trailing for most of the game.

What then is more likely;

Donaghy told Battista and Martino to bet Charlotte, they mistakenly bet Minnesota. Donaghy didn’t get paid for this game (the man says no apples).

Donaghy happened to call the game very one-sided against the side he thought he bet.

Donaghy told Battista and Martno to bet on Minnesota, they bet on Minnesota. The line moved 1.5 or more points. Minnesota was trailing, Donaghy gave them a little 17-0 call margin help. Minnesota comes back and wins and everyone rejoices in victory (apples for all).

I don’t even think its close.

Which brings me to this, Aside from the fact that Donaghy may or may not be a pathological liar, why Donaghy would go to such lengths to lie about this particular game?

I’ll answer this in my next post.

Regular Season vs Playoff Officiating

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 05:05:00 -0400

Officiating always seems to come under the microscope during the NBA Playoffs. There are some truisms spouted about in the media about how playoff basketball is a much more rough and tumble brand of basketball and further the Refs let them play more. Is this accurate?

Looking at Historical call rates (all types of calls fouls+infractions and violations) in theregular season vs the playoffs here is what we find;

Regular Season;

2003 48.8537

2004 47.511

2005 50.407

2006 51.2699

2007 51.467

2008 47.7211

2009 47.536

2010 47.290

Playoffs

2003 53.397

2004 51.670

2005 51.845

2006 53.842

2007 49.974

2008 50.011

2009 50.647

2010 51.467

2008-2010 Seasons have all featured more calls per game in the Playoffs vs the Regular Season.